After years of resistance, ages of proclaiming ‘Never!’, I have succumbed and joined the ranks of the Mac Users. Believe me, I was wrestling with my conscience all the way to the Apple Store – on the one hand, my previous experiences with Mac have been nothing short of horrific; but on the other hand, I needed to make a 15 second video for a $15,000 contest and my camera only takes video in quicktime format. My good friend Jay has been sweet enough to spend three straight days with me, working on filming, foley work, and so forth. (Heck yeah, we did foley! For a 15 second clip!) I had three days worth of video filmed and all set to become the world’s greatest 15 second video clip, and yet, no tools with which to piece it all together.

    I needed a Mac, but I didn’t want to admit it. Earlier this evening I asked my brother if I could borrow his Powerbook, but sadly he’s working on changing the world at the moment and he couldn’t part with it. He did, however, say to my Mom, “Why don’t you just go get a Mac Mini?” Who woulda guessed? Mom said, “Okay!”

    There followed what I think will become one of the strangest nights of my young life – my Mother and I debated the Mac Mini for an hour. Normally when a child debates with its Mother, the child takes on the persona of a used car salesman, selling her on the absolute necessity of said purchase. This evening, however, she played the salesman, I played the unsure potential customer. More than that, I even tried to convince her that it was silly, that Mac had treated us horribly last time and therefore we shouldn’t buy anything from them. I guess overall I was ticked at Mac and I felt guilty that my parents were about to shell out $600 for this little pet project of mine. But despite my misgivings, Mom won out, and at 8:30 this evening we drove out to Tysons Corner.

    The entire drive there I was having this massive internal debate, trying to reconcile my feelings for Mac with my desire to enter this contest. I was so incredibly confident in my entry – I had thought of it within a split second as soon as I saw the advertisement for the contest. In 15 seconds I had to explain the biggest challenge of my life. For my trouble I’d win $15,000 and a 5 day/4 night trip to New York to attend the final day of the Tribeca Film Festival. Better yet, my film would be judged by Martin Scorsese & M. Night Shyamalan! This would be the big time. And I loved my idea, I thought it was brilliant, and I knew I could do it. But I’d have to make a deal with a devil to do it…

    Now before you MacHeads get mad at me for that statement, let me explain. I’ve been at this very same crossroads before – there was a contest last year sponsored by American Airlines, I made a video, I borrowed my brother’s Powerbook, and despite my confidence, I promptly lost. But I’d had so much fun with it that I wanted the tools to edit the videos captured by my camera. In August I tried to buy an iBook. I was psyched, I was ready, I went in, I got it, I walked out.

    They sold me the wrong thing. The stupid slicked-hair colored-contact-wearing tight-shirted Mac-Geek had bait n’ switched me. I went in with a list of what I wanted, he looked it over, checked it twice, rang it up. He suavely distracted me every time I tried to check the sticker on the box. As I was getting into my car, I realized he’d sent me out the door with the lower quality iBook at the higher quality price. I was mad, I was steamed. He’d wasted an hour of my precious time right before an important trip, an hour I could have spent buying a PC notebook. I went back in and it took a while to get my money back. No apologies, no nothing. I called Apple Customer Service and got the same sleazy reaction. I was so mad that they didn’t care. It was all flash, all smiles, all sugar-coated pacification; no meat, no real feelings, no service. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

    All these memories swam around in my mind as I stood at the Mac store. Thankfully I was assisted by a kindly geek with a beard the size of Manhattan. He was honest, he was jovial; he stood out from the rest of the crowd of drones. He was nice and actually down-sold me, telling me the smaller Mini would be just fine. And big surprise, it’s just fine! He was right!

    On the way home I decided how to reconcile my feelings with Mac and my recent purchase. I will own my Mac, I will edit video on it, but I will never be a MacHead. I will maintain my belief that neither forms of computing are absolutely superior. Rather, they each have their specialities, each have their pros and cons. I will maintain my personal motto of, “Moderation in all things” and join the ranks of those who own both PCs and Macs.

    That said, now that I have my Mini, that means I can add more videos to the Heather Show Video Variety Spectacular! Wahooooo! Keep an eye out over the coming months for new crazy Quicktime silliness – a bunch of ideas are already brewing in my mind. 🙂 And whether or not my 15 second slice o’ my life wins or loses, you can bet it’ll be up there soon as well (as soon as it’s legal.) In the meantime, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that I win the big huge grand prize and can fly off to New York with my wallet that much thicker. And if I do win, I’ll owe it to the backwards debate my Mother and I had this evening, and her kindness in supporting my ever burgeoning silliness. Here’s to videos, big kudos to Jay for putting up with me this week, and here’s to parents! And check back soon for bloopers and further recountings of my adventures in production. I’ll get into that later, after I’ve had some sleep. 🙂